'no-fixes' in stable

[wobbly-hs <wobbly@happysheep.me.uk>]

[message re posted because previous attempt was without word wrapping - sorry!]

Hi
Can anyone clarify the policy for when upstream fixes completed in testing
come down to stable.

I migrated from Debian 6 to 7 earlier in 2014 once the latest stable distro
had been out quite some time.  It was a surprise to find that printing did not
work.  Bug#656640 shows a fix has been made but not moved downstream to
stable.  A kindly person pointed out how to make my own backport, but that has
now shown up further printing problems in stable.

My question is seeking to understand the criteria on which a fix is moved down
to stable.  I think it is likely if the problem were not that printing doesn't
work but that web servers don't work, it would be fixed in stable overnight.
So why is printing given second class treatment?  Is it a case yet again of
"debian is not for desktop users?"  I have seen
https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/developers-reference/pkgs.html#upload-stable
this seems to suggest that once something breaks on a stable desktop it will
only be fixed if the bug risks crashing the whole system.

By the way - I'm not subscribed to this list so will check back for replies
occasionally / for a while only.

Thanks.